[Web4lib] The value of Twitter as back channel

[Mary Beth Faccioli]

When I went to SXSW this year, there were at least 3 sessions in each time slot I wanted to attend.  Sometimes there were 5.  Brilliantly, the event planners assigned hashtags to each session in advance, and they were available with the session information.  This allowed me to completely ignore the general #sxsw hashtag, which was overwhelming and near impossible to follow due to sheer volume, and concentrate on tweets from the sessions I was interested in.  It also allowed me to set up feeds for all sessions of interest in advance, so I could go through them in my reader after the fact (no small task).  I got heaps of info from sessions I didn't attend - not quite the same as being there, but the next best thing.  Like John I had to report on the conference when back at work, and the feeds were invaluable for that.  

I hope the approach of pre-assigning hashtags to individual sessions catches on for library conferences.

Mary Beth Faccioli
Instructional Design and Technology Consultant
Colorado State Library

--- On Sat, 8/7/10, John Fereira <jaf30 at cornell.edu> wrote:

> From: John Fereira <jaf30 at cornell.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] The value of Twitter as back channel
> To: "C Ward Price" <cprice55 at ivytech.edu>, "web4lib at webjunction.org" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
> Date: Saturday, August 7, 2010, 8:30 AM
> Just to add my own story about
> twitter at conferences, I'll describe a bit about my
> conference twitter experience for the Internet Librarian
> 2009 conference.
> 
> First, the hashtag for the conference was created well
> before the conference attended and I started following it a
> couple of weeks before I left.  There were a few that
> were more active than others and having attended techie
> conferences for 20 years or so I realize that one of the
> most beneficial aspects of these conferences is not the one
> hour sessions one my attend but all the networking
> opportunities that are available.  By following the
> twitter stream prior to the conference I was able to start
> that networking before the conference and identify a couple
> of people that I wanted to meet face to face before I
> left.  Since I my arrival at the conference was almost
> a full day early I was free for dinner the night before and
> rather than eat alone I shared a table with someone else
> that was posting to the twitter stream, and because the
> location was shared on the twitter stream there were others
> that showed up later.  Due to the use of twitter the
> face-to-face networking started
>   before the conference.
> 
> I know that I saw at least one or two tweets for
> coordinated ride sharing from the airport to the hotel.
> 
> During the conference, the person that was providing
> computer/networking support was following the twitter
> feed.  He'd frequently send a tweet asking about
> wireless access in the various locations and would respond
> quickly if there was a problem. At one point a couple of
> people complained about the temperature on one of the rooms
> and within minutes someone from the hotel was in the room to
> adjust the thermostat.  
> 
> While attending a session, whenever someone showed a slide
> with a URL someone would post a tweet about it.  I
> never had to try and write down a URL before the slide
> changed.   Sometimes someone would post a url
> to a related site that the speaker didn't even
> mention.  Despite modern technology we still don't have
> the ability to attend concurrent sessions physically, but by
> following the tweets I could not only see what was going on
> in the session that I was attending but could also follow
> what was going on in the others.  On the second day, I
> was chatting with someone just before the lunch break and
> when I was done I found that everyone had scattered so I
> went off looking for someplace to eat by myself.  I
> checked the twitter stream and someone posted that he was at
> a certain restaurant and welcomed anyone to join him, so I
> did.  I still follow that person on twitter.
> 
> I started following 20 or so new people at that conference
> and although I'm no longer following some of them, there are
> others that I'm reading every day.  The entire twitter
> stream, tagged with #IL2009 was archived onto
> twapperkeeper.  When I got back home I had to give a
> presentation about what I learned at the conference ant the
> twapperkeeper was an invaluable resource for looking up
> sites that were mentioned during the presentations I
> attended.
> 
> The IL2009 was a really too conference that was made a
> *lot* better due to use of twitter before, during, and after
> the conference.
> 
> 
> 
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